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OPINION

Brock Turner trial highlights injustices of rape investigation

FSU News
Published 12:51 p.m. ET June 15, 2016

This undated booking photo provided by Santa Clara County Sheriff shows Brock Turner a former Stanford University swimmer who received six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.(Photo11: AP)

If you don’t recognize the name Brock Turner, you may recognize his newfound title “The Stanford Rapist.” Brock Turner is the 20-year-old man who raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster, yet people seem to always bring up his successful swimming career every time they talk about him.

At this point, opinions on Turner and his actions have been discussed tirelessly, so I won’t be talking about him. Plenty of articles discuss his ruined career. Plenty discuss the crime he committed. In this article, I’m going to talk about the other party that wronged the unnamed victim, and that party is our justice system.

Turner’s sinfully small sentence of six months in prison is already shocking and insulting enough, but the justice system is guilty of more than failing to give him the sentence he deserves. Not only did they let down the victim in terms of justice, but they also let her down in terms of her treatment as a human being, not a piece of evidence.

My clothes were confiscated and I stood naked while the nurses held a ruler to various abrasions on my body and photographed them,” the victim wrote in her letter addressing Turner. “I had multiple swabs inserted into my vagina and anus, needles for shots, pills, had a Nikon pointed right into my spread legs. I had long, pointed beaks inside me and had my vagina smeared with cold, blue paint to check for abrasions.”

While a lot of this is necessary and standard procedure for a rape case, it was a traumatizing endeavor for the victim to endure. They only allowed her to keep her necklace and shoes, and she had to go home with this newfound burden.

The part of her story that most disturbed me about our justice system was that after she went home, hiding her story at first from her friends and family and trying to cope with her depression and trauma on her own, she received absolutely no calls or updates from the hospital or from law enforcement about her case or what was going to happen to her or her rapist. She simply sat in constant anxiety, and the only reminder of her attack was the sweatshirt the hospital had given her.

She discovered that they had caught her rapist through a news article while at work. She was forced to learn about her own story in third-person.

“I learned what happened to me the same time everyone else in the world learned what happened to me.”

This is the part that makes me sick to my stomach. She was swabbed, probed, photographed and examined by complete strangers with no recollection of the night prior. She was handled like a piece of evidence, and like an inanimate piece of evidence, she received no updates or offers for counseling or help. All she had received were hugs and advice to try to continue her life as normal.

This case is a true eye-opener about our country. Turner is at fault for being a heartless criminal and raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. Our media is at fault for spreading smiling yearbook pictures of Turner instead of mugshots and never failing to mention how unfortunate it is that such a promising man’s career is ruined. Our justice system is at fault for giving a pathetic sentence and for treating the victim with no humanity.

After this case, no one should scratch their heads and wonder why women choose not to step forward in cases of rape. No one should wonder why women live in constant fear of being assaulted in some way or another. No one should wonder why there are so many repeat-offenders (including Turner) roaming free. Our country is in sincere need of change in this field, because the only ones who shouldn’t be blamed at this point are the only ones who are: the victims.